Modern communications technology provides a number of different ways for people to receive real-time traffic flow information. With the advent of modern global positioning system (GPS)-enabled navigation systems, drivers can now receive their own location information via GPS satellite directly in their automobiles and elsewhere. That GPS information can be used in mapping software to allow users to determine their specific location at any latitude and longitude within the United States and in other countries. Such systems do not, however, allow or properly incentivize users to both transmit and obtain real-time traffic flow information so that traffic flow problems can be located, anticipated, mitigated and/or avoided. Commercial systems as they now exist allow a user only to receive information from GPS satellites and to determine location, but do not offer the capability of sending and receiving further information regarding real-time traffic flow patterns associated with any given roadway.
Current methods of collection and disbursement of traffic information are expensive and less effective because the information is based upon a limited sample of data points. In U.S. Pat. App. No. 20040176103, Dirk et al. disclosed a means of location dependent services that can be offered by service providers using service providing entities. In the disclosed method, a service provider entity includes an interface for communicating with the user equipment and for receiving location information from a plurality of communications systems. With the location information of the user equipment, the service provider entity can disburse requested information to the user for which the user has registered. This method does not, however, provide a means to collect information from a dynamic environment such as that associated with traffic flow.
The Federal government recently funded one project through Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Center for Infrastructure and Transportation Studies. The system that was developed tracks automobile movement through GPS devices in cars that are connected wirelessly. The system is reportedly an improvement over systems that merely utilize traffic sensors and roadside cameras to monitor traffic flow, but the system contains several deficiencies.
For example, the system, as well as other known systems, requires additional infrastructure for large-scale implementation of a nationwide, or worldwide, system capable of receiving and transmitting traffic flow data to and from many users. The system is also deficient in that it does not allow users to subscribe to a service capable of collecting and distributing traffic flow data according to a payment plan. Because privacy concerns may cause many users to turn off the transmitting module of their in-car wireless and GPS devices in this and other prior art systems, such systems would suffer from a dearth of data-transmitting users. Any such system would inevitably suffer from free-rider problems because it provides no incentive for users to transmit their position, speed, etc. for collection and retransmission to other users.
In view of the above-identified and other deficiencies of prior art systems, it would be desirable to provide a system and method capable of collecting and distributing reliable, real-time traffic flow data without requiring any new infrastructure.